And there he was, ninety minutes later, striding across the sand to the agreed-upon meeting place, where she’d set up her umbrella. Talk about dukeish casual. He wore blue gingham swim trunks, a white T-shirt, and a pair of tortoise-shell Ray-Bans. She could just see him on the Mediterranean yacht that had made him into the Depraved Duke. She scrambled to her feet, suddenly—weirdly—shy. She wasn’t sure how to greet him, which was dumb because they talked on the phone all the time. She thought back to the couple of times on his first trip to New York when she’d surprised herself by blurting out something really personal and ended up exposing too much of herself, making herself too vulnerable. She felt that way now, except literally. Physically. She should have put a cover-up on. She should have—

He scooped her into his arms, engulfing her in a great big hug. Apparently he wasn’t feeling any of the awkwardness she was. Which was good. She hugged him back, and he picked her up so that her feet rose a few inches from the sand. He still had that spicy pine smell, as he had last Christmas. She tried not to inhale too overtly.

“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he declared, and with a final, extra-hard squeeze, he plopped down on her beach blanket, laid on one side facing her with his head propped on his hand, and said, “Tell me everything.”

“I just talked to you yesterday.”

“So?” he said, sticking his hand into the bag of potato chips she had open. “Tell me everything again.”

“Okay, give that back now,” Dani said a couple of hours later, holding her hand out for her phone, which Max had commandeered to pass judgment on her Tinder prospects. He was a little taken aback at how many messaging threads she had going. She couldn’t find anyone decent in this large a pool? “You’ve done enough damage,” she said laughingly as she pried the phone out of his grip.

“I’m not sure I’d call it damage,” he said, but he gave the phone back. He had done some trawling on her behalf, and he was pretty sure he’d found a few diamonds in the rough, a few princes among the bad grammar and ill-advised tattoos. He still wasn’t convinced that any of them were actually worthy of her, but he considered this an exercise in harm reduction. “I’m hot. I’m going back in the water.”